notacommittee's post W30

[notacommittee]

Finished my W30 about a week ago actually and took some time to process the whole experience. In the end, I was completely underwhelmed. I didn't change my diet much (already pretty clean Paleo to begin with...the only thing I really gave up was butter & white potatoes), I didn't change my attitude towards food (still struggling just as hard with cravings and the constant urge to binge on sugar), and I'm just as screwed up as when I started.

In fact, I think my biggest lesson from the whole mess is that my "food problems" are really about other psychological/emotional issues. Food is just a symptom. They aren't really about food, so it's ridiculous to try to change them by putting different things in my mouth. So I guess I learned something from the fact that it didn't work?

Now I'm doing reintroduction - a lot of people claim they just don't care about legumes but for me they're the most important thing because they can get my grocery bill back down to somewhat reasonable levels. Doing strict Paleo for the W30 and the preceding several months was just too expensive, because I absolutely refuse to buy CAFO meat on ethical grounds, so I was dropping ridiculous amounts of cash on grass-fed everything. Trying lentils this week (soaked in accordance with WAPF directions) and so far no stomach problems, which is good because I'd be eating them even if I did get sick.

I'm going to spend a few weeks working through the different varieties of beans (black beans, kidney beans, etc.) and then maybe move on to pseudograins like quinoa and possibly rice and corn. I have no intention of reintroducing binge trigger foods like bread, sugar, nuts, or dried fruit, but knowing me at some point my self-control will snap and I'll end up binging anyway Dairy is going to wait until I can have it in a recipe someone else made, because a block of cheese in the fridge is another binge waiting to happen.

Major challenge coming up: visiting my parents next week (read: house full of foods I'm not allowed to eat and a concerned mother who doesn't understand that no, I really CANNOT EVER have even just one Oreo). Last time I visited I ended up in the kitchen sneaking Nutella straight out of the jar after everyone else had gone to bed. It's really sad how my food issues make me want to isolate myself from my family to prevent this from happening again.

Wow that was a lot of text.

[Krista Billows Rodriguez]

If you've identified the psychological and emotional triggers then you're doing better than a lot of people who just can't bring themselves to look at why they do what they do. I hope your post W30 period brings you more clarity and moves you toward some peace.

Good luck at your parents' house, that would be really tough. Will power is a myth, there's really only setting yourself up to succeed to setting yourself up to fail and being forced into a situation where you're surrounded by off plan foods and faced with well meaning, but misinformed loved ones, is going to be a huge challenge. You can get through it but there's no doubt it'll be tough.

[notacommittee]

A few weeks later - reintroduced lentils with great success; no real issues there. Tried both the green and the orange variety and the green ones are tastier but neither kind gave me any digestive or other issues. I also tried a small amount of goat milk in an individual serving container and it went down fine; it just wasn't very good so I don't really have much of an urge to eat any more. Maybe I'll want it if I ever take up coffee again.

Ate at a restaurant (turkey burger with a lettuce bun + sweet potato fries) and just ate their ketchup without a fuss; it almost certainly had sugar in it because...ketchup. It was actually quite unpleasantly sweet to me and the fries were tastier without, but it's nice to know that I can have that small amount of sugar without a huge reaction.

Currently in the airport waiting to go to my parents' - airports are usually a huge trigger for me because they're like stepping out of the real world and somehow that sets off my binge urges, but so far it's been OK. I've been dealing with the usual set of cravings exacerbated by being so close to food I don't normally have to see, but so far nothing unmanageable, none of that "throw everything to the winds" feeling that is really the hallmark of binging for me (as opposed to just being ravenously physically hungry, which also happens, but then I want lots of GOOD food, not lots of crap).

My chiropractor has me on an L-glutamine + a bunch of herbs supplement thing, and I've also started coconut water kefir so hopefully some of that will help.

[notacommittee]

Update: I'm at my parents' house and so far it's a struggle every day to stay away from the junk but I've been doing OK. Eating a little more fruit than I'd like, and I've been having artificial sweetener in my tea when I'm craving worse stuff. Managed to stay away from the really bad stuff like PB, Oreos, Nutella, Kashi cereal, etc. so far. I really wish I could find the willpower to resist the fruit - I've been eating an apple every day, usually a clementine as well, and sometimes some frozen berries. I've also been having about 1 tbsp of sunflower seed butter with the apple, and that's really bad because it tastes like sugar and cinnamon and all kinds of deliciousness and I just know that one day I'm going to dive headfirst into the jar and not come out. I wish I'd never discovered it in the cupboard. It's just really hard for me to see my parents blithely eating toast with honey, cookies, chips, crackers, etc. and not be able to have something sweet as well.

On the other hand, I'm doing a lot of cooking for them since they're both pretty busy and I'm like the Vegetable Avenger in the kitchen. Yesterday I snuck half a head of cauliflower into our fish cakes (subbed in for half of the potatoes in the original recipe) and they were none the wiser!

[notacommittee]

Today I succeeded on the Truvia front and in my goal of not eating any fruit with breakfast or lunch. So good for that I guess but I broke down and had a couple walnuts after dinner while I was waiting for water to boil for my tea even though I'd promised myself NO MORE NUTS. Ugh.

And now I'm eating strawberries because I also promised myself that if I stayed away from fruit the rest of the day I could have strawberries after dinner. My dad had oreos. I want an oreo or twelve but I don't get to have yummy food anymore

[notacommittee]

So yesterday and today were pretty much completely off the rails. Yesterday was my mom's birthday and I was feeling deprived in advance because I knew I wouldn't get to have any birthday cake. So I started with an apple and some sunflower butter despite knowing that I shouldn't, and then moved on to regular peanut butter, way too many almonds, Nutella, and even a few Oreos and these gingersnap cookies we had in the house. The only reason why I stopped was that I didn't want my parents noticing I had eaten anything.

Then today I had to fly home and did OK in the airport but only because I was promising myself the whole time that my reward for making it through would be to eat what I wanted when I got home. Which turned out to be a pint of Arctic Zero, a box of nut thins, and an entire jar of almond butter. And now I'm struggling to not go for fro yo.

I am so frustrated and mad at myself right now because it's like either I'm stressed and deprived because I can't have tasty food, or I'm feeling like a total failure because I gave in and ate what I wanted. I KNOW I need to get rid of nuts probably for the foreseeable future but I'm just struggling to take out YET ANOTHER thing that I actually enjoy eating when there's so little in my diet that I like. I just want to eat like a normal damn person; I wasn't overweight in college when I was eating gummy worms every day and I had a much healthier mental attitude towards food than I do now, that's for sure.

And the Nutella wasn't even that good.

Ugh, I hate myself.

[notacommittee]

OK so that struggle to avoid the FroYo totally failed and ended up also including an entire package of oreos and a bag of truffles. I don't even have words for how much I loathe myself right now. I had been doing at least ok, at least avoiding outright binging until I couldn't handle not getting to eat the gross grocery-store birthday cake that doesn't even taste good, and decided to drown my sorrows in sugar the next day as though that would somehow make up for it.

I feel disgusting and bloated and sick. God why am I so pathetic? Why am I so weak? Why do I have such a total lack of willpower and self-control?

Starting today (after I get done FASTING FOREVER to get rid of all this crap): 30 days with no nuts, fruit, or sugar. NONE. I don't care how deprived I feel, I don't care how bad the cravings get, and I don't care what my stupid body wants because obviously it's not a reliable indicator of what I actually need. Not doing a strict W30 because honestly I have no issues with lentils and white potatoes so it's silly to cut them out just because. But my god I want to take a bayonet to my own guts right now.

I need to be in prison or something so I don't have to make these decisions because clearly I'm incompetent to do it for myself. Maybe I should do the Whole365 except for the aforementioned lentils thing.

[Tom Denham]

I used to live on beans and rice. Variety for me was having black beans and rice at one meal, pinto beans and rice at the next meal, and navy beans and rice at the next. Never any problems that I noticed. Some people have more sensitive stomachs, but not me and apparently not you either. That's a good thing. Enjoy your beans, lentils, and rice. Personally, I still want to avoid corn, if for nothing else than that most of it is genetically modified now.

You started off saying, "I think my biggest lesson from the whole mess is that my "food problems" are really about other psychological/emotional issues. Food is just a symptom. They aren't really about food, so it's ridiculous to try to change them by putting different things in my mouth." I think you are right that binging is a symptom of psychological/emotional issues and that you can't resolve or heal those issues by eating differently. I think eating trigger foods makes things worse, but I don't think eating a steady diet of meat and veggies will make your psychological wounds heal and the pain stop. I think you need some kind, healthy, healing people in your life.

I was a psychotherapist until 1997 and still think psychotherapy is useful. Many people who leave the profession leave in despair, but I saw enough good during the 15 years I was practicing that it was not despair that drove me to different work. Another thing that makes me think psychotherapy is useful is that I have been a "patient" for 30 years now. I have not been in therapy continuously, but have worked with about a dozen different practitioners off and on since 1982 on different issues. My first therapist was a minister who worked with me for free. My current therapist is a psychologist who charges $160 for 45 minutes. All of my therapists were helpful in some way, though some were more useful than others. I hope you will find someone to work with.

Maybe you should take cooking lessons somewhere too. When you say you feel deprived about what you can eat and the foods that you enjoy, I think, "You should eat at my house." I make amazing meals every day. I think I am gifted with a better than average palate so I get the hang of making things taste good easier than some people, but I have learned a lot of tricks from cooks, cooking classes, and reading that makes my food taste good. Maybe the reason I don't have cravings like many people have cravings is that I am very happy with what I am eating almost all the time.

[notacommittee]

Hah! Your beans-and-rice sounds like my food variety in college (lentil soup with potatoes...lentil soup with carrots...lentil soup with kale...lentil soup with spinach...)

I think you are right that binging is a symptom of psychological/emotional issues and that you can't resolve or heal those issues by eating differently. I think eating trigger foods makes things worse, but I don't think eating a steady diet of meat and veggies will make your psychological wounds heal and the pain stop. I think you need some kind, healthy, healing people in your life.

I noticed you suggested this to me on a previous post, too, and I think you're right - I actually am seeing a therapist even though it's super expensive ($165/session and not covered by my insurance)...honestly it's actually making things worse right now; I notice my strongest urgest to binge are after I come home from a session. He's great though, very perceptive and also Paleo-friendly so he's having me try some new supplements to try to fix my gut. Just for that it would be worth it because his advice is really helping more than anything I could find by myself on the internet. I'm actually having normal bowel movements for the first time in over a year! That's huge for me because the disgusting bloated/sick feeling is a binge trigger in itself (like I'm already feeling gross so why not at least have the pleasure of doing something to deserve it). I'm hoping that the post-therapy crazies are some kind of weird extinction burst or that I'm like detoxing from the emotional issues or something.

I actually enjoy Paleo food; when I was at home I cooked with my mom and we made some delicious meals. But I also want things I can't have. Like, I love Indian food and will happily nom down a huge plate of totally W30-compliant chicken curry but I also want naan bread to go with it. Or I love vegetable soup and would eat it all day, but I also want crusty sourdough with butter. And of course I want dessert foods and more than that I want the ability to eat dessert foods without it being this huge emotional Thing.

Anyway thanks for your support!

[Tom Denham]

Oops. I knew I had seen you around, but did not remember I am repeating myself from another thread.

About making things worse... I want to watch TV or get on the computer after sessions. I do not want to have intimate conversations with anyone because I am overloaded from the intimacy of the session and want to reaffirm my boundaries. It has taken me a long time to understand why I become grumpy after a really good experience. Maybe one day I will be pleasant and relaxed after a really good experience, but now I can at least keep from being an ass. Progress!

Ahh. Indian food. I went twice last week. I consumed dairy and sugar in the sauces, but skipped the naan bread and did not feel deprived. This week I went for Greek food and ate the pita bread. Who can eat Greek without pita bread? I guess I can relate to what you are saying. A little. Hmm.

[Jtandi]

aw I feel for you. this struggle is worse for some, easier for others. I have a struggled and luckily have not started with anything extremely non-compliant or I fear I would travel down the same path.

to echo what Tom and you said - this is completely about emotional and psychological issues, not any issues to do with the actual food or hunger. and obviously yours can be easily triggered by your parents (totally not unusual. a lot of mine are triggered by my husband! I love him dearly, but...and my others can easily be triggered by my parents. they all know just how to get me worked up with just a few words). if therapy is not available to you then I HIGHLY suggest overeaters anonymous. I am a member of alcoholics anonymous (I have over 13 years sober) and strongly apply all that I've learned in AA to my addiction to food. they are the same, stuffing ourselves with SOMETHING...ANYTHING to rid ourselves of the emotions and feelings we are having, or to try to fill ourselves up with something we feel we don't have.

see if you can find an OA meeting in your area, get yourself a sponsor. work through things. I work with my AA sponsor because we both have food issues. or, if possible, do therapy. or, the best option is to do both!!

yesterday is over, tomorrow hasn't even begun.all we have is today. and it is truly one day at a time. as we say in AA, if you have one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow you'll piss all over today.

[notacommittee]

Oops. I knew I had seen you around, but did not remember I am repeating myself from another thread.

About making things worse... I want to watch TV or get on the computer after sessions. I do not want to have intimate conversations with anyone because I am overloaded from the intimacy of the session and want to reaffirm my boundaries. It has taken me a long time to understand why I become grumpy after a really good experience. Maybe one day I will be pleasant and relaxed after a really good experience, but now I can at least keep from being an ass. Progress!

Good advice bears repeating; don't worry about it.

I thought being irritable after therapy was just me! My mom called me afterwards once and asked me what I'd talked about that day and I wanted to just hang up, or chew her head off for asking. It was like this reflexive defensive reaction where I was just too raw to talk about it. Hopefully that means it's working!

[notacommittee]

as we say in AA, if you have one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow you'll piss all over today.

HAH! I love that. I'm not huge on the AA/OA concept because I'm a total godless heathen, but thanks for the moral support!

[notacommittee]

A few days into my no-fruit, no-nuts, legumes-allowed 30 days of penitence, and I feel a lot calmer now. I feel like the worst is probably yet to come, when I get restless and bored this weekend. But it's good for me to just know that I'm not allowed to have those "gateway drug" foods, full stop. Instead of trying to "moderate" (funny joke!) them all the time, and then hating myself for eating too much of them. Better just to avoid it all entirely.

I'm also thinking of getting rid of carrots, beets, and squash, since those are really easy for me to eat for pleasure and I just don't trust myself around anything I like to eat for pleasure. Will try eliminating them for a week or two and then reintroducing to see how it goes...

[Jtandi]

please remember that doing a whole30 and living in the whole9 fashion is about changing the relationship we have with food, the way we think about it, the joy we GET from it! (that's not a bad thing!). what strikes me is your talk of penitence. that's the exact opposite of what I'm trying to achieve. continuing to hold on to guilt or labeling ourselves "good" or "bad" because of what we put into our body will perpetuate our unhealthy relationship with food. we don't have to stop eating things that give us pleasure - especially things like carrots and beets! they are healthy and good! they are not pushing anything else off your plate!! finding pleasure in the food we eat, to me, is the ultimate goal of this journey. it's about seeing that there is no guilt or disgrace or judgement about what we put into our mouth, there are choices and we get to wake up each day and make new ones or the same ones. yes, hard fast rules are perfect to start with, but when we begin to whittle away more and more then it's no longer a whole30 or a whole9 life, it's a way of punishing ourselves, which is another way we are allowing food to control us. rather than continue to cut things out I would love to see you find some things to purposefully put into your diet. rather than look at it in the negative (I can't/shouldn't/won't eat ____) look at it in the positive (I LOVE eating carrots and would love to add THIS veggie to it to see if I like that as much)

[notacommittee]

we don't have to stop eating things that give us pleasure - especially things like carrots and beets! they are healthy and good! they are not pushing anything else off your plate!! finding pleasure in the food we eat, to me, is the ultimate goal of this journey. it's about seeing that there is no guilt or disgrace or judgement about what we put into our mouth, there are choices and we get to wake up each day and make new ones or the same ones.

This sounds harsh, but: talk to me about "no guilt or disgrace or judgement" when you've eaten an entire cheesecake and then made yourself throw up so you can go back and eat an entire pint of ice cream. Do you know what it feels like to be hanging over the toilet with saliva dripping down your hand, scratching at the back of your throat with your fingernails and gagging on the food you just ate while your stomach is so painfully stretched that you look like you're about to give birth? It feels like guilt and disgrace and judgement, and then some.

I have very good reasons not to trust myself around any and all foods that give me pleasure. Those are all foods with no brakes for me. Anything that I like eating above a certain level, I can't have because I won't ever stop. I've eaten a pound of carrots at once - that's not healthy. This is always so hard to explain to people who don't get it, but I just can't do things in moderation. It's easier and healthier for me to avoid things completely than to try to moderate them.

And yes, I'm punishing myself. Maybe I'm abusing the W30 as a form of self-flagellation by proxy and my apologies to the nice people who don't deserve to have their program made into my instrument of penitence, but I deserve it. I deserve worse - what I really need is to be locked up in some kind of mental institution where I can't pull this kind of crap, but unfortunately society doesn't think I'm crazy enough for that. You're talking to me like I'm a normal and mentally healthy person, and I'm not.

[notacommittee]

Well, yesterday I had some of the worst cravings ever (specifically Oreos), and a massive panic attack (complete with fun spastic self-clawing action!) right on schedule after my brain doctor appointment. I actually had my shoes on to go out and buy some Oreos, and only stopped because I was crying/hyperventillating too hard to walk properly so I couldn't get off the floor. I told him that the cravings always get worse after seeing him and he said that happens a lot...I'm really considering stopping now because I just don't know how much more of that I can handle. It's bad enough when it happens randomly on its own; I don't need to do stuff to purposefully bring it on!

And then my chiropractor (who is having me try a bunch of supplements to fix my gut) assigned me to eat fruit this week to test whether I can now digest fructose or not, so now I have to deal with 1 serving of fruit/day. I ate an apple this morning and already feel gross. I would just carry on with no fruit and tell him it's fine, except somehow he can tell how my guts are doing just by crunching at my upper back, so there's no use lying.

Weekends are the worst for me for this stuff because I don't have work to distract myself with. And now I'm sitting here, trying to put off taking my disgusting cod liver oil, because seriously, that stuff is the NASTIEST thing I've tasted in a while (and I eat tripe, fish eyes, and chicken feet on a regular basis). Unfortunately all the capsules at my local Whole Foods are unrefrigerated and I know better than to take unrefrigerated CLO.

[notacommittee]

Just had ANOTHER panic attack - I haven't had these since starting the W30 close to 2 months ago now. I want Oreos more than anything in the world right now. I don't even want the Oreos; I just want the pain to stop and I know that eating will make it stop while I'm eating. I'm sick of hating myself and denying myself everything that gives me pleasure. There's nothing but food that makes the pain stop. I wish I would drop dead. I wish I had the guts to kill myself.

[Susan W]

Do you have a close friend or family member you could call?

[Kirsteen]

I'm really, really sorry you're going through this at the moment - it sounds absolutely awful. As Susan said, do you have anyone close to you, you can phone? I wish I could offer some advice but just wanted you to know i'm thinking about you and really, really hope you find some way of feeling better soon. Hang in there, wishing you all the very best,

[notacommittee]

Do you have a close friend or family member you could call?

Unfortunately not I have no friends and if I call my mom it just upsets her too without making me feel any better.

I'm doing better now although still wishing I had someone to handcuff me to the desk to save me from the convenience store across the way (maybe I should just commit some crime bad enough to get sent to prison?)

[notacommittee]

Called my therapist today and quit...I feel a little guilty over it but not nearly as bad as the fear of what was going to happen after meeting with him again. Lol so much for the medical establishment's ability to fix me.

I'm trying to eat more fat than usual to help stabilize my mood, and just more than usual, on the theory that I may be undereating for my activity level. Luckily for me avocados were on sale yesterday.

Breakfast: 3 eggs + 1/2 avocado + potato + broccoli

Lunch: kidney beans + red peppers and broccoli

Dinner will be beef curry with coconut milk, cauliflower, and another potato if I do decide to go to BJJ.

[notacommittee]

Felt much better yesterday; I even actually laughed for the first time in a while. I think I might just be detoxing from the crazy sugar crap that I threw at myself a week ago, although it's weird because sugar detox doesn't usually take me this long. The physical symptoms are already gone, just the cravings are still here. And it's bizarre for me to crave specific foods this continuously. It's been Oreos, Oreos, Oreos, ever since I ate them last Tuesday. Usuallly I just want sugar and if I'm craving any particular food it's Nutella, ice cream, or Reeses cups, not crunchy/dry cookies. The texture is very different. But I have very clear mental images of myself opening the Oreo, even down to how the white filling separates between the cookie halves; it's definitely Oreos that I want and not just anything sugary.

Breakfast: 3 eggs + potato + cauliflower

Lunch: leftover beef curry + asparagus

Dinner: kidney beans + eggplant + another potato

[notacommittee]

OK, I take it back about feeling better. I just gave up trying to fight myself and dove headfirst into an entire box of Oreos. Also wound up eating a candy bar, most of a package of mixed nuts, some cookie dough, and some peanut butter. It all tasted pretty disgusting of course.

I now have the world's hugest stomach ache and physically I feel like total crap but it's almost worth it just to get the damn cravings out of my head. My body is going haywire (heart rate through the ceiling, 6-months-pregnant stomach despite having visible abs when I took the first bite, etc.), but mentally I'm happy, energetic, and generally feeling good. I'm thinking positively about the future instead of looking at it with total despair and frustration. This always happens: the sicker I make myself binging on junk food, the happier and more creative I feel. So I only have the energy to stick to a restrictive diet when I'm cheating on it

I hate hate HATE what Paleo has done for my relationship with food, and I really wish I could go back a year and a half in time and prevent myself from ever looking into it. I think I would be healthier overall right now, if I consider both mental and physical health as important.

Edit, later in the evening: I seriously think Matt Stone may be onto something. I felt totally energized and perky, just like my old self. Usually I walk around with basic feelings of inadequacy and hopeless depression which are covered up to a greater or lesser degree depending on what's happening at the time. Today, I felt like my "base feeling" was just this calm energy. I TRIED to make myself depressed and it didn't work; I just kept feeling happy.

In BJJ, I usually have this loop tape in my head like "you're such a failure; you suck at this and you have no excuse; you've been doing it for a year and everyone still beats you, blah blah blah" but today it was totally absent and I was cheerful the whole time even when getting my ass kicked.

Is this how normal people feel all the time? Because I like being fit and healthy but feeling like this all the time would almost be worth gaining 20/30/40 pounds for. I can't even believe how wonderful my mental outlook is. Oreos: like therapy, only they actually work instead of making it worse, and only cost $4.99!

[notacommittee]

Today I started out riding the tail end of my good mood from yesterday but I think I'm now back to normal, unfortunately. And craving again as usual: peanut butter this time (at least it's not the f@#$% Oreos!).

12:00: oven-roasted potatoes; 3 eggs; colby jack cheese; mixed veggies; strawberries (dear chiropractor: please please PLEASE forget about this fruit thing soon)

4:00: ground beef with veggies

I've been thinking all day about just giving up and eating whatever I want, but when it comes down to it I think I'm too scared of gaining weight. I like being fit and healthy. And I know it's not actually the food that I want, but it's the only pleasure I can give myself right now, or for the foreseeable future. They say that emotional eating won't make the emotion go away, but for me it does. It works, and that's the scary thing about it.